


Fool’s Gold and Ruby Glass

by laudatenium



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, Mild Spoilers, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Tony is a secret geology nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3877792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudatenium/pseuds/laudatenium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Iron pyrite.  Fool’s gold.  Used to be mistaken for real gold.  It’s soft and brittle, but under close scrutiny it’s worthless.”</p><p>“Tony – “</p><p>“I’m brittle.  I’m worthless.  I’m fake.”</p><p>“You don’t really believe that, do you?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool’s Gold and Ruby Glass

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of people have been doing little post AoU stories, so here is mine :)

Mineral pyrite.  Iron sulfide.  FeS2.  Pale silvery-brass in color, tarnishes iridescent.  6 to 6.5 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness.  Metallic luster.  Streaks brownish-greenish-black.  Cubic crystal structure.  Brittle.

 

He liked the pyrite.  It was uniform, organized.  Pretty.  Shimmering cubes that rested primly on coal or sandstone.  They looked best on the shelf, because they looked almost manufactured next to the fractured and uneven stones.

 

His mother liked geodes better.  Rugged exteriors that revealed sharp spears of color when cracked.  He disagreed with her, but would sit with her for hours to crack them open, investigating the contents with undiluted glee.

 

His father screamed at him that geology wasn’t a proper field of science.  One November night after finishing a bottle of scotch, Howard gathered up the rocks and minerals and threw them in the duck pond.  The next morning, a brand new soldering iron was hissing and cracking on a sponge, and a dizzying assortment of freshly taped resistors rested where the magnifying glasses once stood.

 

Jarvis nursed him through the pneumonia he got after wading into pond after dark to recover his rocks.  He slurped chicken soup as he listened to the distant sounds of his mother screaming, his father shouting, his mother crying, his mother running.

 

He was sent to school not long after he got better.  His father didn’t come to see him off.  His mother leaned down for untold numbers of hugs and kisses, the new necklace she had bought swinging, a center slice of an amethyst geode.

 

When he returned home again, he locked himself away with his circuit boards and forgot he even considered geology worthwhile.

 

 

 

Time goes on.  Tony graduates top of his class from MIT.  His mother dies after his father wraps the car he was driving around one of the trees lining the driveway.  They found her clutching a slice of amethyst geode.

 

“Against drunkenness.”  He laughs hysterically.  They have to give him something so he doesn’t have a nervous fit at the funeral.

 

He inherits the company, drinks, has sex, revolutionizes the industry, drinks some more.  Pepper begins to run his life, buys funny statues carved from soapstone and hematite and decorates his house with them.  He pretends he doesn’t know what the minerals are, but he does.  A block of rutilated quartz becomes his favorite doorstop.

 

He begins to surround himself with stone again.  Nothing too drastic, but granite countertops and marble floors in the bathrooms.  Black basalt for stairs, river stones in place of landscaping.

 

Then he is lost in the damp heart of the Hindu Kush, billions of tons of rock, all ready to crush him.  A few years later, the house filled with stone crumbles into the sea.

 

He has the arc reactor removed, so there is no piece of any mineral in his body that isn’t necessary.  He rebuilds the Stark Tower into the Avengers Tower, and has everything done up in steel and glass.  He encases himself in gold and titanium, pure, nothing remaining of the natural formations.

 

 

 

“So, what do you think?”  He’s not asking for approval.  All he wants to know is if Steve likes his new quarters, that’s all.  Nothing more.  Stop reading into it.

 

“It’s great, Tony.”  There’s a smile on Steve’s face, one that Tony knows well.  All calcium and whiteness.  No warmth.  Tense at the corners of the mouth, cold sad eyes that asses the minimalistic room.

 

“I, uh, took the _liberty_ –“ Steve groans “- of adding a bit of something special.”

 

“Tony, you didn’t have too –“  but it’s too late, and the premium-grade art supplies are unfolding from their automated trays.  Tony waits with baited breath as Steve runs his fingers over the tubes.  “Tony.  Thank you.”

 

He smiles, and this time it’s genuine.

 

 

 

No one really feels at home there.  Tony least of all.  It’s the ultimate modern office.  So he doesn’t begrudge them leaving.  Barton seems like he belongs wallowing in dirt, anyway.

 

Steve is the first to come back, ostentatiously to gather his stuff to move it to the new training facility.  But FRIDAY alerts him in her soft burr that Captain Rogers is in his living room.

 

Steve is standing there, looking slightly lost in the monolith of concrete and steel.  He's holding a gift bag containing a box covered in a blue ribbon, studying the lump of rock with large pyrite crystals on a side table.  With a jolt, Tony realizes Steve’s never been up here before.

 

“Your place.  It’s . . . nice.”

 

It’s cold.  The couches are formed white leather, the fire is controlled by JARVIS, no, FRIDAY, JARVIS is Vision now, and barely acknowledged him.  Tony doesn’t blame him.  JARVIS more than anyone knew the dark parts of him.  To a lesser extent, Bruce.  And they’re both gone now.  And Tony has nothing left but an empty tower of steel and glass.

 

Steve smiles, forced, but there is an element of fondness mixed in with it.  “I thought you would have gold-plated couches or something.”

 

“What’s that?”  Tony points at the bag.

 

“This?  Well, we were tired from training one day, and Nat decided we should go on a field trip.  Ever heard of Corning?”  Tony shook his head.  “They’ve got this glass museum.  We did this workshop, made glass candy canes.  Fun afternoon.  Before Wanda melted a few pieces.”

 

“Accidentally?”

 

“Let’s go with that.  Anyway, I saw something that my mother always wanted, but learning a bit more about it, I thought of you.”  Steve shrugs and holds out the box.  “I had to order it off an antiques dealer, but well.”

 

Tony reverently takes the box.  It was heavy, dense.  He slides the ribbon off the box and lifts the lid, pulls back the tissue paper to reveal a strawberry colored vase.  Cranberry glass.

 

He remembers seeing glass like this, in his childhood home and other places.  Grandmas coo over it.  This piece is more streamlined, simpler than the ribbed and ruffled edges and fancy engravings.

 

It’s an old lady vase, but Tony still wants to cry.

 

“Why’d it make you think of me?” he asks hoarsely, running a finger along the stem.

 

“They get the color by adding some sort of gold product.  Gold, ruby glass . . . is it bad I was reminded of you?”

 

Tony shoves it away, watching it slide along the table.  Steve catches it before it tips over and shatters.  “Tony, what the hell?”

 

He felt himself shaking.  “I’m not gold.  I say I am but I’m – I’m pyrite, Steve.”

 

Steve stares at him blankly.  “Pyrite?”

 

Tony gestures jerkingly at the formation on the sideboard.  “Iron pyrite.  Fool’s gold.  Used to be mistaken for real gold.  It’s soft and brittle, but under close scrutiny it’s worthless.”

 

“Tony – “

 

“I’m brittle.  I’m worthless.  I’m fake.”

 

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

 

Tony didn’t answer.  He heard Steve take a deep breath.

 

“You know those paints you got me?  The good ones?”  Tony nods, because he doesn’t know where this is going.  “I was surprised by how much change happened to fucking _paint_ when I woke up.  Synthetic acrylics and warnings for cadmium.  It’s nuts.  The textures have changed, the whole industry has changed.  But you got me the old paints, the ones I remember seeing in the store windows and wanting.”

 

“I just had someone sock up on nice ones for you –“

 

Steve held up a hand for silence.  “Do you know what makes good paint?  I honestly can’t tell you most of what they use today.  But classic pigments, I know a bit about.  Some are vegetable based; some are derived from other plants.  But they fade.  After a while, the organic pigments will fade.”

 

Steve moved closer, eyes bright and fierce and so, so blue it made Tony’s teeth ache.

 

“My favorite were the mineral based pigments.  Expensive, yes, terribly expensive.  But ground up ruby will last a lot longer than any bug guts.  You can’t use synthetic paint to mimic iron oxide.”

 

They were standing right in front of each other.  Harsh breaths came from both of them, and the air tasted like Steve.  He couldn’t tell you what that taste was, but it was Steve.

 

“Iron shouldn’t be allowed to rust,” Tony croaked out.

 

“Then how else will you see what it’s made of?” Steve breathed, and the last quivering inches were closed.

 

Tony wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t imagined what kissing Steve would be like.  But this does not live up to his expectations.  Steve is not shy and uncertain; slow, yes, but filled with intent, like this man doesn’t want to let opportunities slip through his fingers.  Like he knows loss, he knows pain, and knows he’ll experience them again, so he should try for happiness where it’s available.

 

Like Tony’s happiness.  Or has the potential to be.

 

He pulls away.  Steve’s breathing hard and his eyes are dialated.

 

“You’re gold anyway.  Gold doesn’t tarnish.”

 

They crash together again, harsher, all that pain and longing manifest.  He feels Steve’s loneliness like it’s his own, saw the pain as tiny Bartons hung off their father, the anguish that comes from being the one who carries the dead bodies off the battlefield.  For all Captain America stands for life, Steve Rogers is surrounded by death.

 

And so is Tony.  So maybe they can grow something alive together.

 

“You’re remodeling,” Steve says after a while.  They had moved to the couch sometime ago, Tony straddling Steve’s lap as he held Tony’s hips, the backs of his thighs.  “I get you like the modern atmosphere, but it needs more hominess.  It looks like a tomb in here.”

 

“Wanna do it yourself, Captain Interior Design?”

 

Steve rolls his eyes.  “No, but having some input would be nice.”

 

Tony kisses the juncture of Steve neck.  “Deal.  Anything else?  Want an actual art studio?  I’ll have them build you an actual studio.  Darkroom, marble chisels, the works.”

 

“Actually,” Steve starts shyly, “I want to learn how to throw clay.  I’ll need, well, clay, a pottery wheel, glazes, a kiln.”

 

“That’s expensive, Cap,” Tony murmurs into Steve’s collarbone, already listing contacts in his head.

 

“I’ll make you personalized coffee mugs,” Steve offers, lilting, teasing tone in his voice as he pulled Tony unfeasibly closer into his chest.

 

“You want to learn to blow glass, too?”

 

“Not today.”  Steve buries his nose in Tony’s hair.  “But I need to get a geology text to read up on pyrite.”

 

“I’ll help you.”

 

“I know you will.”

**Author's Note:**

> *shuffles awkwardly* Comments are always nice . . .


End file.
